Europa Cup 2011 – Sixth Assignment: Freestyle ‘thank you’ flower bouquet

At a quarter past seven on Saturday evening, the by now exhausted Europa Cup competitors were finally ready to tackle their sixth, and last, assignment: the surprise task. As the rules were explained and the to-be-used materials handed out by the jury, it became clear that the task at hand was the creation of a flower bouquet; more specifically, a bouquet that says ‘thank you!’ to its intended audience.

50 minutes were available for the design and creation of the piece, with an additional 15 minutes beforehand to do some non-compositional preparation work. A number of the provided materials were mandatory for all contestants, while the use of others depended on the competitor’s own preference. Contrary to the other rounds, aid from an assistant was not allowed for this task. As during the previous round, however, all the arrangements were to be created on stage during the gala evening ceremony.  

In the end, Danish contestant Susie-Frank Nørgård triumphed in this final round, with a charming little bouquet which particularly convinced through its strong composition and technique. Her score of 84.8 turned out to be high enough to claim the first prize, putting her just two points ahead of Czech competitor Jaromír Kokeš. The photograph below – although slightly cropped unfortunately - provides an accurate impression of her final piece:

Jaromír’s score total of 82.8 thus earned him the silver medal in this sixth and last assignment. The jury praised his ‘thank you’ bouquet for the clever use of color, as well as for the inspiring idea underlying his composition in general. He can be seen putting the finishing touch to his design in the picture below:

Joacim Lindgren from Sweden, lastly, took third place in this concluding round of surprise works. His bouquet, which scored exceptionally high on the technical aspect but slightly less on the other dimensions, earned him a total of 79.2 points. You can get a glimpse of his final product in this picture:

For all of the photos from the Surprise assignment round (which to our regret are not of as good a quality as those of the other Europa Cup rounds), we point you to our photogallery: click here.

To return to the general Europa Cup 2011 page, which has the links to the coverage of the European Championship's other rounds, you may click here.